Warmie Economics: Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Ethanol production and distribution is a government-sponsored false economy and it's hurting you and me:

Strong demand for corn from ethanol plants is driving up the cost of livestock and will raise prices for beef, pork and chicken, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

Meat and poultry production will fall as producers face higher feed costs, the department said in its monthly crop report. Ethanol fuel, which is blended with gasoline, is consuming 20 percent of last year's corn crop and is expected to gobble up more than 25 percent of this year's crop.

The price of corn, the main feed for livestock, has driven the cost of feeding chickens up 40 percent, according to the National Chicken Council. The council says that chicken, the most popular meat with consumers, will soon cost more at the grocery store. The industry worries the competition from ethanol could cause a shortage of corn.

The average price of corn, unchanged from last month, is $3.20 a bushel, up from $2 last year. (source)

Imagine the whoops of media and Dem outrage if gasoline went from $2 a gallon to $3.20! The obscenities directed at Big Oil and the Bush administration would deafen all reasonable people.

But that's what's happened with corn, thanks to a strange alliance of Warmies, Big Gov, Big Oil and Detroit. They have foisted ethanol on us, and as usual, gov-controlled economy is wreaking havoc. For what purpose? Better efficiency? Big cuts in global warming?

Not a chance.

Ethanol does basically nothing to curtail global warming because ag uses so much fuel and fertilizer to produce it, and it takes so much energy to refine it, and it's not nearly as efficient as gasoline, so all in all it takes about as much energy to produce it as it yields.

And all that energy that goes into tractors and fertilizers and harvesters and processing -- it cranks out greenhouse gases bigtime. But no matter, right? Eat your more expensive chicken and steak and shut up.

Just don't ever, ever allow us to get to our own oil in Alaska and offshore.

"Thank you for the "Voice of the Victims films. The students really liked them, and it means so much to them to hear real stories and not watch a cheesy drama like so many other videos."
— High school teacher.